Felix Leiter came into the white, antiseptic room and closed the door conspiratorially behind him. He came and stood beside the bed where Bond lay on the edge of drugged sleep. ?How's it going, feller??

?Not bad. Just doped.?

?Doctor said I wasn't to see you. But I thought you might care to hear the score. Okay??

?Sure.? Bond struggled to concentrate. He didn't really care. All he could think about was the girl.

?Well, I'll make it quick. Doctor's just doing his rounds and I'll get hell if he finds me here. They've recovered both bombs, and Kotze-the physicist chap-is singing like a bird. Seems SPECTRE'S a bunch of really big-time hoodlums-ex-operators of SMERSH, the Mafia, the Gestapo-all the big outfits. Headquarters in Paris. Top man's called Blofeld, but the bastard got away-or anyway they haven't caught up with him yet, according to C.I.A. Probably Largo's radio silence warned him. Must be quite a Mister Genius. Kotze says SPECTRE'S banked millions of dollars since they got going five or six years ago. This job was going to be the final haul. You were right about Miami. It was going to be Target No. 2. Same sort of operation. They were going to plant the second bomb in the yacht basin. Bond smiled weakly. ?So now everybody's happy.? ?Oh, sure. Except me. Haven't been able to get away from my damned radio until now. Valves were almost blowing. And there's a pile of cipher stuff from M just longing for you to get around to it. Thank God the top brass from C.I.A. and a team from your outfit are flying in this evening to take charge. Then we can hand over and watch our two Governments getting snarled up over the epilogue- what to tell the public, what to do with these SPECTRE guys, whether to make you a lord or a duke, how to persuade me to run for President-tricky little details like that. And then we'll damned well get away and have ourselves a ball some place. Maybe you'd care to take that girl along? Hell, she's the one that rates the medals! The guts! They cottoned onto her Geiger counter. God knows what that bastard Largo did to her. But she didn't sing-not a damned word! Then, when the team was under way, she somehow got herself out of the cabin porthole, with her gun and aqualung, and went to get him. Got him, and saved your life into the bargain! I swear I'll never call a girl a `frail' again-not an Italian girl, anyway. Leiter cocked an ear. He moved swiftly to the door. ?Hell, there's that damned medic gumshoeing down the corridor! Be seeing you, James.? He quickly turned the door handle, listened for a moment, and slipped out of the room.

Feebly, desperately, Bond called, ?Wait! Felix! Felix!? But the door had closed. Bond sank back and lay staring at the ceiling. Slowly anger boiled up inside him-and panic. Why in hell didn't someone tell him about the girl? What the hell did he care about all the rest? Was she all right? Where was she? Was she . . .

The door opened. Bond jerked himself upright. He shouted furiously at the white-coated figure, ?The girl. How is she? Quick! Tell me!?

Dr. Stengel, the fashionable doctor of Nassau, was not only fashionable but a good doctor. He was one of the Jewish refugee doctors who, but for Hitler, would have been looking after some big hospital in a town the size of Düsseldorf. Instead, rich and grateful patients had built a modern clinic for him in Nassau where he treated the natives for shillings and the millionaires and their wives for ten guineas a visit. He was more u............